In this case, touching the distinguishing the Law from the Gospel, we
must utterly expel all human and natural wisdom, reason, and
understanding.

All reason is above nature. Therefore by reason in Luther, or rather in
his translator, you must understand the reasoning faculty:--that is,
the logical intellect, or the intellectual understanding. For the
understanding is in all respects a medial and mediate faculty, and has
therefore two extremities or poles, the sensual, in which form it is St.
Paul's [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]; and the intellectual pole, or the
hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Now the reason ('lux
idealis seu spiritualis') shines down into the understanding, which
recognizes the light, 'id est, lumen a luce spirituali quasi alienigenum
aliquid', which it can only comprehend or describe to itself by
attributes opposite to its own essential properties. Now these latter
being contingency, and (for though the immediate objects of the
understanding are 'genera et species', still they are particular 'genera
et species') particularity, it distinguishes the formal light ('lumen')
(not the substantial light, 'lux') of reason by the attributes of the
necessary and the universal; and by irradiation of this 'lumen' or
'shine' the understanding becomes a conclusive or logical faculty. As
such it is [Greek: Lógos anthrôpinos].


Ib. 206.

When Satan saith in thy heart, God will not pardon thy sins, nor be
gracious unto thee, I pray (said Luther) how wilt thou then, as a poor
sinner, raise up and comfort thyself, especially when other signs of
God's wrath besides do beat upon thee, as sickness, poverty, &c. And